The Up and Down Life of Faithful Abraham...A new beginning on Sunday too


Another scriptural journal to possess.  We finished the Gospel of Matthew starting in March of 2024 and extended it to 106 sermons.  We covered it chapter by chapter and verse by verse and word by word.  Now we open our 1st Peter scriptural journals to do the same.  I have been through 1st and 2nd Peter a couple of times.  Once in Machais, Maine at the Machias Valley Baptist Church and another time in Wautoma, Wisconsin at the Waushara Community Church.  I will be looking forward to looking again at the last words of this disciple of Jesus.

This Sunday was an "in between" sermon on the life of Abraham.  He is spoken of very highly in the New Testament as a man of faith and he is but the story to get there is fascinating.  The Bible gives us all the details in Genesis and Joshua 24:2 tells us that he started out as a worshipper of other gods.  The journey to a faith that was displayed by strict obedience takes many chapters in the book of Genesis.  There are many ups and downs or switching from God's Plan A to his own Plan B before you see his full devotion to what God has said.

Plan A is God made with God's words, God's ways and God's will.  Plan B is man made with the picking and choosing of God's words; the modifying of God's ways; and the self-determining of God's will.  When Abraham is following Plan B, he is motivated by fear of man.  When Abraham is following Plan A, he is motivated by a trust in what God has said and also with thinking and acting on behalf of others rather than himself.  Along the way of following Plan B negative consequences start piling up from others following his lead.  Of course, the opposite is true when Abraham is following Plan A but they are not negative consequences but actually blessings which his covenant with God in Genesis 12 was suppose to produce.

Abraham is faced with a question from his 3 visitors in Genesis 18:14a (LSB), "Is anything too difficult for Yahweh?"  Is this Plan A of God of giving Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age too difficult for Him?  Is this Plan A that results in descendants so numerous too difficult for God?  This is the question that Abraham must answer and us also when we know what God's Plan A is for us to live as ambassadors of Jesus Christ in the world we live in.  Abraham will eventually prove that he believes it in Genesis 22:5 (LSB), "And Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there; and we will worship, and we will return to you.'"  Abraham believed that nothing was too difficult for God, the completion of Plan A of many descendants from his line through Isaac even if he did just as God had said.  Somehow God would make it happen and in his eyes it would probably be the raising of Isaac from the dead.  What a foreshadowing of the Father (God) later sacrificing His Son (Jesus) and many descendants would come from Him rising from the dead in 3 days.  This time Abraham followed Plan A to the "t" and only stopped when God told him.  Jesus would follow Plan A to the "t" and that "t" was a cross for our salvation so we could be an eternal descendant of His.

The Bible is one book made up of 66 books that point us to Jesus.  The characters along the way help us to see Jesus as the "better" Abraham.  Jesus fulfills what all the others could not.  We draw lessons from Abraham's life, good and bad, but our savior is not having faith like Abraham but putting our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  

Adam



A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 40th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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